This is a new series looking at the Minisforum UM890 Pro Mini PC running Linux. In this series, I examine every aspect of this Mini PC in detail from a Linux perspective.
The Minisforum UM890 Pro is a powerful mini PC based on an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS with integrated Radeon 780M. The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS has a CPU Mark of 29617 and the Radeon 780M has a G3D Mark of 6915.
The Minisforum UM890 Pro is available for a 26% discount on Minisforum’s website. Many of their range also have sizeable discounts.
In the previous article I looked at the UM890 Pro’s power consumption when the machine is idling, under light load, and under full load.
Delving into the UM890 Pro’s BIOS reveals an option not available in the other mini PC’s I’ve been writing about. The BIOS setting lets you set the AMD Configurable TDP (cTDP).
This setting is available in Advanced / AMD CBS / SMU Common Options / System Configuration.
The chart below summarises power consumption at each setting available in the BIOS. It’s showing the power consumption when the CPU is fully stressed.
So when the BIOS is set to a cTDP of 15W, the UM890 Pro uses 38.9 w/h when the CPU is fully stressed. And at this setting (or at 20W cTDP) the power save governor (set in KDE Plasma, GNOME etc) has no effect. If I set the cTDP at 28W, the machine uses 58.9 w/h under full load. But if the power save governor is activated, power consumption will go down to 53.3 w/h.
The BIOS setting gives another way to control the power consumption of the mini PC.
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Minisforum UM890 Pro Mini PC | |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the series and interrogation of the machine |
| Benchmarks | Benchmarking the Minisforum UM890 Pro |
| Power | Testing and comparing the power consumption |